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to Jane and now she’s watching. I don’t want to look weird.”
    He shook his head and laughed. Really, if this was happening to one of the other guys in his squad, he’d be riding him for it. But the fact that it was his Risa who was dancing with him, not because of the romantic setting or the fact that she’d missed him, but to save face, kept him in check.
    “ Risa.”
    “ I know. It’s pitiful. I’d love to be enjoying this romantic evening with you. Like we were in Vegas, remember that?” she paused and looked up at him.
    He nodded.
    “But we can’t, can we? I ran and you tracked me down, and now we’ve got to sort it all out. We’re not in the right place to enjoy this night, but no one else knows that except us.”
    “ So we’re pretending to be in love?” he asked. The words almost stuck in the back of his throat. They had talked about needing each other, missing each other and building a future together, but never of love. It was one of the things that had managed to elude him most of his life.
    What he really wanted to know was how she felt about him. Funny that this would be the moment his courage failed him. He didn’t want to remember the unlovable boy he’d been. The one whose mother had found it so easy to walk away from, leave him. He’d dealt with that long ago and was strong now. But Risa made him remember what it felt like to feel fear.
    He didn ’t need it. He knew that. Had lived a contented life for thirty-three years without having a woman love him. But now he waited to see what she’d say.
    “ Yes.”
    “ Love?”
    “ All of it. I’m one of the vendors in this Wedding Giveaway and I want the brides to feel like I understand them and what they need.”
    “ So you don’t love me?” he asked, finding he needed to know. His words were bare and stark. Suddenly the games they’d been playing since he pulled up behind her convertible on the dark highway were gone.
    “ I don’t know,” she admitted. “Do you love me? Or are you just hoping I love you, so you can walk away and really hurt me for leaving you?”
    There it was again. The real Risa in amongst the changing faces she kept presenting him. He spun her around as the band switched to The Tennessee Waltz. The lyrics were fitting, given his current situation with Risa. He did know how much he’d lost. He could still remember dancing to this song with his mom when he was about seven. It was one of his only memories of her. Why had he started a conversation he hadn’t wanted to have? He knew that tonight he couldn’t be rational or level-headed where she was concerned.
    Being in the military for most of his adult life had taught him to keep his emotions in check. To ensure that he made decisions based on training, rather than going off on his gut instincts. Yet that’s what he’d been doing. No matter how many times he tried to force himself back into military shape, it wasn’t happening.
    And this woman was the reason why.
    “God, you make me nuts,” he said under his breath. She smelled like a spring garden and felt light in his arms. Like something he’d been missing for way too long.
    “ You’re welcome,” she said, wryly.
    “ Woman, one day you are going to push me too far,” he warned her.
    She tipped her head back, gazing up at him with those wide brown eyes of hers, and gave him a look so serious he knew that he wasn ’t going to like it.
    “ I hope I do. Then I’ll see whatever it is you are so bent on hiding from me.”
    “ You’re the one who ran.”
    She went up on tiptoe and kissed him. Her lips moved over his with that same tentative sweetness as earlier, but this time he knew it wasn’t because she was scared or shy; she was trying to soothe him. To reassure him in some way. But of what, he had no idea. Or didn’t want to admit he did.
    They ’d stopped dancing. He cupped her butt through the fabric of her slinky dress and drew her more fully against him. Other couples continued to move